Kamala Harris Regains Lead

BY Neal Broverman

November 14 2010 8:20 PM ET

The race for California attorney general remains up in the air — and with it, possibly the fate of Proposition 8 — but Democrat Kamala Harris has momentarily regained her lead over Republican Steve Cooley.

As of Saturday morning, Harris was up by 14,043 votes, two tenths of 1% of the over 8 million votes cast in this race. For most of the past week, Cooley has held a lead over Harris, the district attorney of San Francisco. Cooley, Los Angeles County's district attorney, has vowed to defend Prop. 8 in a federal appeals court; oral arguments start on December 6. Harris has promised to not defend the proposition, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, since it was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.

L.A. Weekly reports that 150,000 Los Angeles County ballots remain to be counted; Harris did surprisingly well in the state's most populous county even though she had little name recognition outside of the Bay Area. The Weekly also reports that Harris's campaign is accusing Cooley's campaign of intimidating ballot counters as a way to disqualify potential votes for Harris.